Reviews

Not too long ago I was watching "The Hustler", and it was quite obvious that the film and practically everything about it was undeniably cool. Especially the way Jackie Gleason walked, the way he was dressed, the way he spoke, he wasn't trying to be cool, he simply was.

On a minorly related note, "Amelie" is a film that wants to be quirky, it wants to be cutesy, but it fails because it tries too hard: The exaggerated camera movements and sound effects, the ultra-luminous (yet rather nice) cinematography designed to turn Paris into a fantasy world, the odd quips of dialogue on orgasms, but the absolute biggest fault of the film is with the lead character known as Amelie.

Amelie is a woman-child who likes to take it upon herself to do selfless good deeds for everyone around her, and the entire storyline revolves around her attempts to fix various problems for everyone within her vicinity. The only problem is that Amelie's selflessness isn't real, she's only doing this to feed her own sense of accomplishment so she can crack that god-awful smile at the camera once that good deed is done. Not long after it becomes extremely apparent that she's a psychopath who breaks into other people's appartments to screw with them (because she, not the police or any authorities, must be the one to deal with bad people), appoints herself as an unneeded tour guide for a blind man and basically does whatever she wants, regardless of whether it actually helps anyone.

The film has clearly taken cues from the French New Wave (Amelie even watches "Jules Et Jim" at the Cinema) but it has taken those editing and storytelling tricks to the nth degree and spoiled the entire film, even Amelie is taken from Irene Jacob's character in "Three Colours: Red" and made even nicer and sweeter until she's just plain obnoxious It's an unbearably naive film that's filled with so much sugary fake charm that it becomes sickening rather quickly, and once the cutesy novelty wears off you realise that there's just no substance to the storyline at all. Some people have been enchanted by the magical qualities of it, but I was completely put off as the whole thing was over-the-top and rather self-indulgent. A film like "L'Atalante" finds the poetic beauty in the banality of life and simply displays it in all of its ordinary glory. "Amelie" constantly forces you to accept its own childish and faux-magical view of the world, some people can accept it, but I can't.

Kubrick has made some masterful films, highly regarded ("2001") or underrated ("Barry Lyndon" and "Eyes Wide Shut") but the only thing shocking about "A Clockwork Orange" is just how big a misstep Kubrick made. It's a hypocritical, pompous mess which has been idolised by the youth for its over-the-top violence and over-the-top language and hailed by others for its heard-it-all-before message.

After juvenile delinquent Alex (The admittedly excellent Malcolm McDowell) kills one person too many (with a statue of a penis with the other woman swinging a bust of his favourite composer Beethoven at him, oh the deliciously subtle irony of it all), he gets carted off to jail, snags himself the Ludovico treatment and is made to feel disgust every time he tries to act out on his violent and sexual urges.

Speaking of the violence, the majority occurs in the opening half an hour, and it would be shocking if it weren't for Kubrick's gimmicky treatment of it to add a cheaply ironic edge to it all. It just reduces the violence to a cartoon, all to smash us over the head with the fact that there's too much violence in society and we're as much to blame as the criminals for this. In effect, Kubrick has designed the film as a Ludovico treatment for the audience, but he made a complete mess of proceedings with the purposely hilarious violence: If you want to make a serious point about a serious issue, sometimes you have to put it in a serious context.

But it's not just the violence that is overused, Alex's voice-over simply takes away from Kubrick's storytelling abilities, ramming home every point that doesn't need to be spelt out for the audience, all until the pathetic final line of the film that's meant to be ironic but just comes across as incredibly cheesy. The worst aspect of the film? The horribly outdated synthesised soundtrack which adds another ironic tone to the violence, unnecessary, overused and just plain terrible. It all adds up to a pointless film that teaches us that violence is wrong, politicians will do anything to stay in power, prison can't always reform criminals and the youth are crazy, why tell us something we don't know already. It's not even the fact that Kubrick tries to let us come to our own decision, by purposely trying to make us laugh at the violence and then judging us for laughing at it, it's just hypocritical, forceful and downright pompous. You can't chase somebody down in your car, run them over then berate them for getting hit.

Overall "A Clockwork Orange" is a big mistake from a director who has thankfully made far better films with more subtlety and more trust in the audience. For films about the violence in society, I recommend "Badlands" which is better in literally every single way.

How this has been rewarded monumental praise by almost everyone is beyond me. I never saw this in the Cinema's, 10 years after it's release I finally decided to give it a shot.

Basically, Woody gets taken away, Buzz brings him back home, everyone lives happily ever after, the end. That is all. It really is that predictable. There is absolutely nothing redeeming in this film: The animation hasn't aged too well, the voice acting is poor (Joan Cusack is the worst offender), the direction is extremely shoddy, the musical number makes you want to tear your eardrums out. But the absolute worst thing about this film? The script: Calling it an affront to humanity would be an understatement, there are some truly awful moments of dialogue, stupid sequences that amount to nothing whatsoever, some of the most unoriginal, pathetic film references that have no relation to the storyline whatsoever, just there for pop culture reference. They're not even done with any subtlety, they're just there for the sake of it. It's not even funny, it's a giant groan fest as lame after lame bits of "wisdom" fly from every toy's mouth, cheesy and dull one-liners are uttered so often you really will want to kill yourself. Even some of the supposed adult jokes are just plain silly and shouldn't even be there. This was a painfully awful, horrid, boring waste of my life. I don't care what anyone says, this was a terrible terrible film. I can honestly say that this is one of the worst films I have ever seen in my life: There is nothing good I could possibly say about this, at least other supposed terrible films are so bad they're good. But Toy Story 2 has no redeemable qualities, like Michael Corleone at the end of Godfather Part Two, there is no redemption for it. Now Godfather Part Two, that's an amazing sequel, check that film out once again. Avoid this worthless pile of vomit.

You Don't Know What You Got Till It's Gone You Don't Know What You Got Till It's Gone You Don't Know What You Got Till It's Gone You Don't Know What You Got Till It's Gone You Don't Know What You Got Till It's Gone.

Imagine that drilled over and over into your head for 2 hours. That would sum up this infinitely overrated movie from someone who clearly should stick to putting his ideas out in 3 minutes as opposed to 123.

Jim Carrey is a boring pathetic loser who meets "vibrant" (her hair colour sounds like some type of condom) Kate Winslet on a train. They talk about stuff I couldn't honestly care about for a while. Then one day Jim Carrey finds out that she had her memory of him erased, so being the spiteful dweeb prone to peer pressure, he follows suit. What follows, is some of the most boring, decently edited, repetitive scenes to be praised to high heaven. Why on Earth would Jim Carrey want to hold on to his "precious" memories of her? She's clearly a bitch. There's also a rather weak subplot about people who work at the memory-erasing place, taking advantage of people after their operation. (Could it be a stab at governmental power abuse? Young people love to rebel against "The Man", so we must appeal to them).

In the end, it turns out that when they first met on the train at the start of the film, that was AFTER their operation (which anyone with two brain cells could have guessed right at the start). Because we all know, films that start at the end are incredibly complex to figure out.

The good points? The acting is OK, and some of the editing is nice, and it's OK to look at. But apart from that, this is an absolutely awful excuse of film-making. It has truly ignorant characters, it goes absolutely nowhere for 2 hours straight and gives you absolutely nothing profound or interesting to take from it. All it does is appeal to pseudo-intellectual's who have been spurned in relationships (because they are pseudo-intellectual losers who don't deserve to be in love), because let's face it, who hasn't been hurt in a relationship? Exactly, and because Michel Gondry is French, and apparently French films incorporate every single foreign language film, it can be classified as a French film, and is therefore cool (because you must have one french film in your list of favourite films, most people have that other overrated pile of garbage "Amelie" in there, but this can suffice).

Overall, an absolute waste of time, you want to watch a real film about grown ups in love? "In The Mood For Love" and "2046". Please don't waste your time on this piece of garbage.

The title may be a bold claim for a movie that lasts less than 10 minutes, but while most movies last for 90 minutes, they can seem to be slightly boring in some parts, Rendezvous is not. Steeped in mystery for almost 30 years, the movie has been underground for most of this time, but thanks to modern technology, Cetait Un Rendezvous is back to enthrall a new generation of petrolheads. With no edits or special effects, meaning that everything you see was real, the movie seems all the more astonishing.

Starting off with a beating heart, the movie cuts to a rasping exhaust note of an unknown car, all taken from a camera mounted on the front of it, capturing the sights and sounds of 70's Paris, while the driver (who's face is never shown) extracts every ounce of performance out of said car. After 8 minutes of near misses, speeding through red lights and that intoxicating engine noise, a surprise is revealed.

The movie leaves all sorts of questions unanswered: What was the car? Who was the driver? How fast was he going? And how the hell did he do it? This next bit contains spoilers.

The car in the movie is believed to be the director's own Ferrari 275 GTB, while the driver is said to be either an F1 driver or the director himself. The speed of the car is said to be over 150mph. However, thanks to the way Rendezvous has left so many questions unanswered, these have been guesses. However, the sad truth is, Claude Lelouch, the director, explained that the car he was driving was actually a Mercedes, with the Ferrari exhaust note added to give the viewer a greater sense of speed, he also confirmed that he drove the car himself.

After people who simply watched the movie and admitted on how amazing it was, the previous truths may have burst a big bubble for them. However, who's to say that Lelouch was telling the truth this time? Couldn't it be possible for someone who never told the whole story for 30 years, is simply lying once more? Perhaps not, but the truth is, you never know, because you weren't there at that time.

Yet, while on the surface the film appears to be a reckless, brainless car movie for petrolheads only, the underlying notion the movie exudes is love: Think about the location Paris, the most romantic city in the world. Then think about the car engine note, a Ferrari, the car marque most often used with passion and love. Then think to the beginning of the movie, the beating heart. Why is it beating? Beating for the sheer excitement of traversing Paris at breakneck speed? Or beating for desire to spend time with the woman the driver loves, whom he meets at the end (the surprise ending, thus explaining the name of Cetait Un Rendezvous). Now think why he drove the way he did. Was it reckless? Stupid? Irresponsible? Yes. Why do it? Out of love and desire. The love of his woman, the desire to want to be with her so much that he would risk everything, just to spend one moment with her. In a world where everything has become fast paced and politically correct, the driver applies the fast-paced principle to the driving world, in order to relax and spend time with his girlfriend. Could it be that we spend so much time doing what we have to do, that we run out of time to do what we want to do? This is the true genius of Rendezvous: It appeals to so many by the action on screen, that it displays profound thinking that you never expect to find when you look deep into it's soul. You find something wonderful where you least expect it. On the surface, Rendezvous is one of the greatest car movies ever made, yet under the surface, it is also one of the most intriguing. A real shame that so few people have seen this tiny slice of cinema heaven, if you look hard enough, you will find Cetait Un Rendezvous, watch it and be amazed. Likewise, if you try to focus on the underlying theme in Rendezvous, you will be simply amazed by what you find.

Miss this amazing film at your own cost, for it is far greater than you would imagine it, in more ways than one.